Five years after entering the market, Mind the Bridge appoints senior MD Yub Shin to lead its expanded Korean operations and unveils “The Innovation Economy of South Korea”, a full-ecosystem analysis presented at the Scaleup Summit Seoul 2026.
Goal? Tracking the entire Korean innovation ecosystem in real time, from early-stage startups to the enabling ecosystem of investors, innovation brokers and corporate demand.

SEOUL, South Korea, September 8, 2026 – Mind the Bridge, global innovation advisory firm that empowers economies through entrepreneurship and innovation, today announced the opening of its new Innovation Center in Seoul, marking a significant step-up in its five-year presence in South Korea. The hub will be led by seasoned executive Yub Shin, recently appointed Managing Director for Asia. The news was unveiled at the Scaleup Summit Seoul 2026, held this week alongside the Try Everything conference.

Yub Shin brings a 25-year track record in top-tier strategy consulting, having held senior Partner roles at Arthur D. Little, ERM and Kearney, advising major corporations on market entry, strategic transformation and growth. Under his leadership, the new Seoul base becomes Mind the Bridge’s operational anchor for corporate innovation programs, scaleup engagement and technology scouting across the region.

“South Korea has moved from being a market to watch to a market you need to be in, on the ground, today,” said Marco Marinucci, CEO and Founder of Mind the Bridge. “Opening our new Innovation Center here, with an experienced local leader like Yub at the helm, is our answer to that urgency. This is not a satellite office, it’s a renewed, structural commitment to one of the fastest-moving innovation economies in the world, at the exact moment our corporate partners need us there most.”

A New Lens on Korean Innovation

The opening was accompanied by the launch of “The Innovation Economy of South Korea“, a new report that expands Mind the Bridge’s annual scaleup mapping into a full analysis of the country’s innovation system, from early-stage startups to the enabling ecosystem of investors, brokers and corporate demand.

Key findings include:

  • 3,359 scaleups sit at the top of the Korean innovation pyramid, making South Korea the 8th largest national innovation ecosystem in the world, with Seoul ranking 11th globally among developed innovation hubs.
  • Below that layer, an estimated ~10,000 startups and a broader base of ~25,000 innovative SMEs not backed by venture capital.
  • An enabling ecosystem of roughly 700 investors and 550+ public and private innovation brokers, powering 800+ programs in support of entrepreneurship.
  • On the demand side, ~130 Korean companies with structured open innovation activities and ~90 international companies with an identified innovation outpost in the country.

The report also traces two decades of deliberate industrial policy behind the growth: from raising R&D spending to over 5% of GDP by 2008, to the 2013 launch of TIPS (Tech Incubator Program for Startups), to the 2014–2015 rollout of 17 regional Centers for Creative Economy and Innovation (CCEI) connecting chaebols with startup incubation.
The result: Korea went from a relatively small tech ecosystem to one of the world’s major ones, now roughly twice the size of Singapore and ahead of Japan and Germany in ecosystem scale. 

“The numbers tell a story of industrial policy focused on innovation, not chance,” said Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge. “A country that was mid-pack a decade ago is now a top-10 global innovation economy, the result of two decades of consistent strategic direction. With this report—and by open-sourcing the underlying data through the MTBEcosystem Platform—we want to turn that trajectory into actionable intelligence that international companies can actually use, not simply admire.” 

A Growing Bridge for European Industry

The announcement also reflects accelerating interest from European industrial leaders in accessing Korea’s innovation system and its government co-funding opportunities. Following the launch of Fincantieri’s Innovation Antenna in Korea in 2025, Mind the Bridge this week led a tech mission tied to the Scaleup Summit and the new Innovation Center’s opening, including companies like Eni, A2A, Terranova and Fincantieri. The goal? to underscore Korea’s growing role as a strategic destination for European and global industry, particularly in Physical AI, robotics, deep tech, and advanced manufacturing. 

Mind the Bridge continues to track innovation actors and stakeholders  in real time through MTBEcosystem, its open platform mapping private and public operators, programs and initiatives across the Korean innovation landscape, a resource the company says will increasingly support corporates and policymakers in shaping future strategies and programs in the region.